photos/words by Shabnam Ferdowsi
The story about how I found myself in the French countryside eating Persian tahchin rice, baking sourdough focaccia and reminiscing about Tehran with strangers I had felt like I had known for years is a serendipitous one. It begins with connecting with Shiva Shirazi (@gouter.partager) on Instagram a couple of months before.
Shiva had found my page through some photos I had posted of a Paris-based food artist’s work. My Persian name piqued her curiosity and my photos of sangak bread from a trip to a bakery in Tehran pulled at her heartstrings. Once she started following me, I was just as curious. How did this Tehran-born baker end up in the countryside of central France?
A few messages back and forth led to an invitation to come through to the farm anytime I wished, an offer I immediately and eagerly took. A month later, I got on a train (well, three) out of Paris and headed to Loches, the town nearby where they would pick me up, hoping to uncover some stories, cook up some food with Shiva, and capture this moment in time.
Shiva was born and raised in Tehran before moving to Vancouver in 2019 to study design. It was there that her love for baking really fell into place and took the lead over her architecture degree. For six months in 2021, she ran a pop-up out of the Pie Shoppe, where a few times a week they would let her take over the kitchen and offer an array of her baked goods at the counter.
It was also in Vancouver where she met her husband, Kévin, and at the end of 2021, they decided to move back to his home country of France. They spent six months driving around the country, getting a feel for different cities and regions, and searching for their new home. On the last weekend, they stopped by a farm where Kevin’s friend had been living for a few years. An hour away from Tours, in the Touraine region, this huge property was passed down for generations over the past couple of centuries, and now was being run and rebuilt by a small crew of friends.
At a loss for where to settle down, Shiva and Kevin decided to join this little community on the Montruand farm until the future figured itself out.
On Saturday morning, I went to Loches with Shiva and Kévin for the weekend farmers’ market. The market was nestled all around the center of town, a conglomeration of all the local farmers and artisans in the area: cheeses, juices, jams, breads, and produce, all cultivated and created in the region, sometimes by the very people selling them at the market stands.
That weekend, Shiva would be working on a catering event, in collaboration with Juliette Krier who runs a farm in the area. Once a month they work together to host brunches for some 15-20 guests, Juliette taking care of the savory menu, Shiva handling the sweets. While Shiva and Juliette prepped that afternoon, I floated from my camera to the whisk, helping where I could, capturing what caught my eye.
Aside from these brunches, Shiva also sells her baked goods at markets or pop-up events in the area. Even though their life in the countryside is temporary, Shiva has found a way to connect with the local community of makers and creatives to keep pursuing her passion, experimenting where she can, and adding a touch of Persian flavors whenever possible.
Sunday night was going to be a community dinner for the group living on the Montruand farm, so I spent the day working on sourdough focaccia (thanks to Shiva’s ripe rye starter). Between each fold during the bulk fermentation of the dough, Kévin shared with me his latest passion for marbling paper and we both geeked out over Carl Zeiss (camera lenses in my case, binoculars in his). When Shiva got back from her event, we all got around the kitchen counter and began prepping for dinner. Everything had an inspiration: smashed roasted eggplant, beet yogurt (maast o laboo), cucumber yogurt (maast o khiar), saffron and barberry rice cake (tahchin), asparagus with a creme fraiche sauce, and my focaccia infused with cumin and topped with sumac and salt.
I was reminded of my days spent experimenting in my kitchen, how motivated I was to bring these same flavors from my roots into dishes I could share with my friends as well, and how good it felt to collaborate on aligned ideas again.
When I learned that Shiva had grown up in the same neighborhood as my grandparents in Tehran, near the same square I had spent all my summers walking around, it solidified the synergy I felt all weekend. I felt like I had known Shiva and Kévin for years as we shared each others’ stories about food, immigration, creativity, and culture. We were asking the same questions from life and ourselves, and it felt like we had all unknowingly walked into an unplanned brainstorming session.
What kind of city will fit all our needs? How do we build something new in a new country? How do we stay connected to our roots? How can we use food to build something sustainable for ourselves and meaningful for others? And is there really such a thing as too much saffron? (Kevin says there is no such thing!)
Though we didn’t find the answers to all these questions by the time they dropped me off at the train station on Monday morning, I left feeling reassured and re-inspired— reassured to know there are others out there searching for their right place, re-inspired by the power that food has in connecting us to one another and all the places we’ve been.
